I don’t think it is short-sightedness as much as inertia. Even if you have felt the benefits first hand, writing pure functions can be really difficult with the tools/languages devs generally use. Most languages expect mutation as a foundational principle. Every line of code is expected to be a side effect. It is going against the grain to do otherwise. And the reason most of our tools are like this is just the happenstance of history’s unfolding.
So then once you resolve to use tools which normalize and expect pure functions, you then immediately have another crisis. You have no idea how to solve problems with pure functions. It’s just different at times.
So I think it is only natural that these difficulties prevent people from giving it a try. I only started to discover the benefits myself pretty recently in my career (6 years ago?). And it wasn’t until even more recently that I began to be able to articulate specifically how it helps.
Fortunately a lot of languages have incorporated functional features. So that helps toward the familiarity of solving problems functionally. For example C# LINQ is a significantly liked feature that is basically lifted straight from FP.
Anyway, i just think it’s hard to do in most of our tools. And changing tools plus learning different ways to solve common problems is too much change at once for most of our teams. It took me multiple tries. Maybe as our tools start to incorporate more FP ideas, as they seem to be doing, the barrier will get smaller.
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.
I don’t think it is short-sightedness as much as inertia. Even if you have felt the benefits first hand, writing pure functions can be really difficult with the tools/languages devs generally use. Most languages expect mutation as a foundational principle. Every line of code is expected to be a side effect. It is going against the grain to do otherwise. And the reason most of our tools are like this is just the happenstance of history’s unfolding.
So then once you resolve to use tools which normalize and expect pure functions, you then immediately have another crisis. You have no idea how to solve problems with pure functions. It’s just different at times.
So I think it is only natural that these difficulties prevent people from giving it a try. I only started to discover the benefits myself pretty recently in my career (6 years ago?). And it wasn’t until even more recently that I began to be able to articulate specifically how it helps.
Fortunately a lot of languages have incorporated functional features. So that helps toward the familiarity of solving problems functionally. For example C# LINQ is a significantly liked feature that is basically lifted straight from FP.
Anyway, i just think it’s hard to do in most of our tools. And changing tools plus learning different ways to solve common problems is too much change at once for most of our teams. It took me multiple tries. Maybe as our tools start to incorporate more FP ideas, as they seem to be doing, the barrier will get smaller.